The man in question is GordonMoore, who at the end of May quietly closed the final chapter in an extraordinary career that is inextricably linked to the history of the semiconductor industry itself.

Moore made explosives and rockets  fragments of which would pepper a neighbor's roof, "which wasn't much fun from their point of view." He tinkered with a variety of explosives, "but nitroglycerine was one of the easiest ones," he said.

Moore has served as president, chief executive officer, chairman and chairman emeritus of the chip giant, which has just estimated second-quarter revenue of between $6.2 billion and $6.8 billion.

But Dr GordonMoore, the creator of this legendary measurement, told a meeting of the world's top chip designers and engineers on Monday that its future will depend on their ability to innovate.

In 1965 GordonMoore stated that the number of transistors on a semiconductor would double roughly every two years, as would overall chip performance.

Dr Moore predicts that the major stumbling block that scientists and engineers have to overcome in the future is that of power leakage and the need to reduce heat levels as more circuits are crammed onto a chip and housed closer together.

GordonMoore was selected as the 2001 Othmer Gold Medalist by a multisociety jury and received the Othmer Gold Medal at a luncheon in New York City on 27 April 2001.

Moore made significant contributions to chemistry and the chemical process industries by engineering two of the most important technologies of the information age: the integrated circuit and the microprocessor.

Moore is heavily involved with Conservation International, where he is chairman of the executive committee.

Moore reread his paper about a year ago, he said, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it also foresaw the use of computers at home, although he had forgotten he made that prediction by the time the first home computer appeared.

Christened later as Moore's Law, his observation became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy for the industry, he said, driving computer makers to keep pace with the expected rate of advancement.

Moore, now 76, was director of research and development at Fairchild Semiconductor when his paper was published in Electronics Magazine on April 19, 1965.

Moore submitted his thesis on the infrared spectra and structure of a few simple molecules, and he took off for a research position at Johns Hopkins University& Applied Physics Laboratory, expecting to remain in or closely connected to academia.

Moore points to a theory that holds that world population will peak sometime during this century and then drift down, which would result in a decrease of pressure on resources some time after the population peak.

Moore, who refers to himself as a fairly quiet person, was sparsely quoted in the press when news of his and Bettys unprecedented gift to Caltech broke last fall.

Moore, 74, the creator of "Moore's Law," told a meeting of many of the world's preeminent chip designers that engineers must concentrate on overcoming power leakage and reducing heat levels as more and more circuits are crammed closer together.

Moore later boosted what is now known as Moore's Law to a prediction that the power of a chip would double every 20 months.

Current limitations on Moore's Law include electrical power leakage and heat dissipation that increases each time more transistors are packed into a smaller area, making chips "not far from the power density of a nuclear reactor," he quipped.

Silicon Valley billionaire and Intel co-founder GordonMoore is donating $5 billion to create what will be the nation's seventh-largest charitable foundation, bigger than such venerable institutions as the Mellon and Rockefeller foundations.

Moore has long supported environmental research and has given millions of dollars to scientists scanning the skies for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Moore's Law--which states that the number of transistors on a given chip can be doubled every two years--has been the guiding principle of progress in electronics and computing since Moore first formulated the famous dictum in 1965.

Moore admits that he failed to predict that engineers could continue to pile layers of circuits on top of each other.

Moore also affirmed he never said transistor count would double every 18 months, as is commonly said.

A native of California, GordonMoore received a BS in chemistry from the University of California-Berkeley and a PhD in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology.

"GordonMoore is an innovator and industry legend, he is a superb leader, motivator, businessman, philanthropist, and educator," stated SIA President George Scalise.

"GordonMoore has been instrumental in the development of the microchip, which has profoundly changed the way we live, work, play and communicate," stated George Scalise, in extending the SIA's congratulations to Dr. Moore.

DR. GORDONMOORE: It really is the way that we have to move in we're going to exploit the advantages of the technology today and moving forward.

DR. GORDONMOORE: What I'm going to do today is talk a bit about the semiconductor technology that underlies the products that we've all grown to love, hate, or whatever the proper emotion is, depending on how well they're working.

DR. GORDONMOORE: Next year it will be 1.8 transistors per ant since the average growth over here is about 18 percent per year compounded over a 30-year period.

Moore is an IEEE Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and winner of the National Medal of Technology, the Franklin Institute’s Bower Leadership Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Moore was born on 3 January 1929 in San Francisco, California and spent his early years in the pastoral town of Pescadero, before his family moved to another Northern California town called Redwood City.

Moore and a group of seven others, who would become known as the “Traitorous Eight” or “the Fairchild Eight,” decided enough was enough and left Shockley to launch their own company.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation was established in September 2000 by Intel co-founder GordonMoore and his wife, Betty, to create positive outcomes for future generations.

University of Georgia marine scientist Mary Ann Moran has been awarded a grant of more than $2.6 million by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to continue her research on marine bacteria that are important in the cycling of carbon and sulfur in the coastal ocean.

Moran is the first UGA scientist to receive an award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which was started in 2000 by GordonMoore, co-founder of Intel, and his wife, Betty.

(môrz lâ) (n.) The observation made in 1965 by GordonMoore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented.

Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future.

In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed.

Moore's Law, based on an accurate prediction in a 1965 article written by Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) co-founder GordonMoore, states that computer chips' speed and processing power will double every two years.

LONDON â” Intel co-founder GordonMoore is to be awarded the Marconi Society Lifetime Achievement Award, only the third recipient of the accolade in the Societyâs 31 year history.

Intel co-founder Moore will be the third recipient in 31 years of the Marconi Society's Lifetime Achievement Award.

When GordonMoore calculated that each new chip contains twice as much capacity as one made 18 months before, he didn't mention that his law also has an inverse: in theory, hardware sold six years ago has one-sixteenth the processing power of machines sold today.

It was Intel founder GordonMoore who foresaw that microprocessors would double in speed and density every year and a half.

According to Moore's law (GordonMoore is Andy Grove's partner and mentor and the co-founder of Intel), since I installed Word 4.0 six years ago, my system should now be running 16 times faster - not slower.